Galway was the loneliest city in the world.
The River Corrib was high and violent. The banks were laden with warning signs and life savers. The water was brown and white, swiftly rushing out to sea, where the swans--the reincarnated dead fishermen--rested on the comparatively flat ocean waters.
She retraced its never ceasing movement inland, until she got to a bridge she didn't feel like crossing.
The wedding was over and she now had 12 hours to kill before her flight to London. She was excited about the next leg of her trip. She wanted to see Big Ben. Buckinham Palace. Drink tea. She was tired of Ireland, of its crotchety provincialism, of the tourists who thought they had "come home", of the looks on the faces of the people when they asked her the time and she responded in an American accent, which she did not know was an accent until now.
The rest of the party was still sleeping or nursing their hangovers in the hotel bar. She was alone. No one knew where she was. She had not thought to tell anyone.
There were no rapids on this part of the river, the water was just high. She looked down into its depths and admired the broken bottles and other trash offered by Galway's residents and tourists.
She heard a voice behind her. She can not tell you know exactly what he said, but he invited her over to his house for tea and she accepted. Finally, after boring tour after boring tour of old, stale, crumbling dead things, she was having an adventure. In a foreign land. With a foreigner.
He was small and brown. Not Irish. I can take him, she thought, even as she told herself that, of course, this was a non-threatening, platonic engagement.
And then they left Galway, or at least, her old concept of it.
***
"I'm sorry, we do not serve baahgulls here." Their French waiter is getting annoyed. Their flight out of London will not be for another several hours and the family party is hungry. The airport cafe is not as accommadating as they had expected. They grudgingly provide their orders and the waiter turns on his heel. A relative eyes him as he prances up to another group of exhausted tourists. "I've never seen so many white people who don't speak English," he says.
***
It was a long walk, both physically and mentally. She had already wandered past the cheery, tourist-friendly downtown, the Corrib having led her to a more residential-type area. But even there it still looked like a postcard. The houses were lovely white stucco, with laundry hanging from the windows, flower pots in the sills, the front yards enclosed by prim wrought iron gates.
They moved past all that. The slim, sophisticated streets became a highway, as wide and ugly as anything you'd see in America. The strip malls looked exactly like the ones in her hometown. And the sagging bodies, loaded down with purchases, looked like the same people she saw everyday, the ones she thought she was escaping in this faraway, mythical land.
The immigrant's apartment was located in a nondescript suburban area that she did not recognize, but again, it could have been anywhere. They entered through an alley.
He locked the door behind him. Her panic annoys him. "See," he says, demonstrating. "I only lock it so my bike isn't stolen.
The small cramped quarters were about as messy as her own room. She looked at the table. It was littered with "how to speak english" pamplets. There were napkins scralled with numbers--dollar amounts. $1,000; $2,000...$100,000,000, these gradually getting smaller and smaller as though written with disbelief, as though written with knowledge that they could not be contained on this or any napkin.
"Where are you from?"
"Pakistan."
"What part?" As if she knew the geography of Pakistan.
He mentioned some village.
"Why are you here?"
He did not appear to want to answer this question. "The kind of person I am...life is very difficult for us there. I had to leave."
He served her tea. It was tan with milk and extremely sweet. She sipped politely, and then almost spat it out as she felt his hands on her knees.
"I want to give you a massage."
"What?"
"I love your face."
"What?"
"I love you."
"I...I have to go."
He is upset, offended. "I am not...a bad man."
***
She rushed hurriedly past this strange, other place, the place not in the guidebook. She wondered if these people, walking home from the shopping centre, if they would assume she was one of them, or if they would know. If they could smell it on her. She ran from his home the way blindly, hopping over concrete fences, suddenly noticing graffiti, dirty-faced children, things she was not ready to see.
No one had missed her. She had just taken a walk by herself. Nothing had happened.
